April 15, 2021 — A heavily disputed plan to build a wind farm off the coast of the Hamptons is no longer under consideration, federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) officials said on Wednesday.
Two weeks after the agency first announced the plan to create five new offshore wind farm development zones in the Atlantic Ocean between New York and New Jersey, officials pulled the plug on two of the zones closest to Long Island — Fairways North, off the coast of the Shinnecock Inlet, and Fairways South, off Fire Island.
The two zones “will not be considered for leasing at this stage,” Luke Feinberg, project manager for BOEM, said during an online task force meeting on the proposed zones, citing issues with commercial fisheries.
Commercial fishing groups had opposed the wind farms on the grounds that it will interfere with their ability to make a living. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority officials also opposed the Fairways zones.
“I think we have some challenges that we have identified in the Fairway sites both in the relative size and distance from the shore,” Gregory Lampman, program manager for environmental research at NYSERDA, said during the meeting. “We’ve been pretty clear, and we want to make sure the projects are more than 18 miles from shore. And they fall at 15.”